


Refinement Is a Relative Term

by isengard



Series: Steve Rogers Doesn't Remember Signing Up for This (Among Other Things) [3]
Category: Marvel Avengers Movies Universe, The Avengers (2012), The Avengers - All Fandoms
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, F/M, Gen, Marijuana, frat!Thor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-28
Updated: 2012-08-28
Packaged: 2017-11-13 01:56:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,148
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/498165
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/isengard/pseuds/isengard
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jane tells Thor he needs to grow up, so he spends a day trying to figure out what that means, with decidedly mixed results.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Refinement Is a Relative Term

“Did I just see Amora leaving your room?” Tony’s voice cut through his thoughts. “Hell of a rebound, man.”

Thor blinked. “She – no, no way man.” He shook his blonde head. “Even if I was trying to rebound – no, just no. That’s about a billion times more trouble than it’s worth.”

Tony looked thoughtful. “Does that mean you wouldn’t mind if I got with her?”

He shrugged. “Your funeral, Stark. Hide your wallet and chain down your tech if you bring her home’s all I’m saying.”

“Noted. Well in that case, you’ll be needing a wingman tonight, and it just so happens that I have an opening.”

“Tonight?” He hadn’t heard of any parties going on that night. They were about to hit midterms, and most of the frats had canceled their usual Wednesday night activities to encourage studying.

“Rhodey’s 21 run!” 

“I thought that was last week.”

Tony waved his hand dismissively. “Does a 21 run ever end, really? Maybe we’ll stop when he’s 22.”

Thor chuckled. “You’ve got an iron liver, my friend.”

“It’s a gift,” his friend replied smugly. “So, you in?”

“Well…text me when you’re headed out; I’ll see where I’m at.”

Tony flipped him a thumbs up and pushed back from the doorframe he was leaning on. “If I catch your ass moping, I’ll be dragging you behind us kicking and screaming. Just a warning.”

“I don’t mope,” Thor called after him. Then he groaned and flopped back on his bed. “I _don’t mope_ ,” he repeated under his breath.

No, he was totally moping.

Why, though? It’s not like he didn’t have options. Besides Amora throwing herself at him every five seconds, he could probably hook up with one of Sif’s friends, or take his pick at the TriDelt house. He wouldn’t even have to try, really. Jane shouldn’t have gotten in his head like this. Bubbly, obsessive-compulsive Jane, with her need to be at the top of every class, spending endless hours in the lab surrounded by all that buzzing equipment, always forgetting to eat until she almost collapsed in the middle of an experiment and had to eat an entire box of cornflakes in one sitting to make up for it. Jane, who could probably program a nuclear reactor in her sleep, but still hadn’t quite gotten the hang of the one-button coffee machine he’d gotten her for Valentine’s Day. Thank god for Darcy, or Jane probably would’ve died from caffeine withdrawal.

Thor sighed. Yeah, he was pretty sure he was in love with her. _Great_. He’d have to win her back, then. 

He tried calling Fandral and Hogun, but they didn’t answer. They were across town at some kind of hot dog eating championship with Volstagg. He’d meant to go with them, but he’d been too busy _moping_. Watching his friend shove fifty hot dogs down his throat in one sitting just didn’t hold the same appeal as it used to. Which was troubling in and of itself, because since when did he _not_ enjoy that?

He decided to call Sif. “I think I’m turning into a refined person.”

She laughed for longer than he thought was necessary. “ _You_? I’m so sure, Thor.”

“Well, I skipped out on Vol’s hot dog showdown to sit in my room and think about my life. So it’s either that or I’m turning into a chick.”

“You’ve got the hairdo down pat,” she mused. “Should I start calling you Thorella?”

“You’re hilarious.”

“What’s all this about, anyways?”  

“Uh…” he suddenly wondered if he’d made the right decision calling Sif, because although they were on fine terms, she _was_ technically his ex, and she liked Jane well enough, but…still. “I don’t know. Just stuff.”

“Cryptic. Let me guess: you’re bummed over Jane dumping you again.”

“She didn’t _dump_ me,” he retorted automatically. “We’re just on a break.”

“Uh-huh. Look, bud, I don’t know what to tell you. You guys need to figure this shit out on your own. I’m sure I’m the last person that she’d want involved.”

“That’s not true,” he started to say, but then, she was probably right. “Okay, yeah. I’ll call her.”

“Good.” She sounded slightly annoyed. Whatever, she’d get over it. “I’ve got soccer practice so I have to run, but hey. Good luck, Thorella.”

He flipped through his contacts until he found Jane, stared at her phone number for a while, and then called someone else.

A groggy-sounding voice picked up the phone. “Yeah?”

“Can I come over?”

His brother paused, and then said, “Give me twenty.”

“All right.” It’d take him half that time to walk to the dorms anyways.

Loki answered the door in sweatpants and wet hair. Thor looked behind him and saw that his bed looked freshly slept in. “Don’t you go to class?”

Loki crossed his arms. “What are you, the fucking Spanish Inquisition?”

Thor pushed past him and looked around the room, feeling his brother’s scowl over his shoulder. “Don’t be a punk. I gotta ask.”

“Well, if you must know, my class was canceled.”

That was a lie, and Thor knew it. Sif had the same finance lecture today as his brother, and she’d texted him already to let him know Loki hadn’t showed. In fact, he hadn’t made it to class in weeks. “Right before midterms, huh?”

Loki narrowed his eyes. “It was an optional review session.” 

He might’ve been telling the truth, but it didn’t really matter. Thor didn’t know when it’d happened exactly, but he’d reached some kind of impasse with his brother not too long ago. Loki would lie, and Thor knew he was lying, and Loki knew that he knew, but neither of them was willing to address it, so it had just become another brick in the ever-growing wall that was coming between them; the wall that he’d laid the foundation for when he chose to go across the country for school and leave his little brother behind with their dysfunctional parents. Lately he felt like when he talked to Loki, he was just talking to that wall, unable to even see his brother behind it.

Every day, he told himself he really ought to do something about the wall.

Loki pulled a threadbare t-shirt over his head and gave him a pointed look. “So.”

“Just kinda wanted to talk, if that’s okay.”

“Right.” His brother went to his desk and pulled out rolling papers. “In other words, you want to do a J.”

He hadn’t _explicitly_ meant that, but he wasn’t going to argue. And, if he was honest with himself, the possibility of getting smoked out was always a heavy motivating factor in his decisions to visit Loki. Jane, during their last fight, had pointed out that he actually never spent time with his brother without getting stoned, and that Loki probably thought he only hung out with him for that reason, but he’d scoffed and told her that was ridiculous. They were brothers, after all. Brothers who liked to smoke a bowl or two when they got together. Big deal.

Loki ran his tongue along the edge of the paper and raised his eyebrows at Thor. “What’s up?”

He sat down heavily on the bed. “Jane sort of – well, we’re on another break.”

A flash of irritation went through him as he watched Loki smirk. “That was quick. What’d you do this time?”

“What makes you think _I_ did anything?”

“It was her idea, wasn’t it?”

He didn’t know _how_ Loki could’ve possibly known that. “Yeah, it was,” he admitted.

“So. What did you do?” Loki repeated.

“Fuck if I know. She just started going off about how I’m ‘immature’ and ‘not capable of being in a relationship’ or something.” He looked to see Loki’s reaction, but his brother remained impassively focused on the rolling process. “She said I don’t take anything seriously enough.”

Loki shrugged. “What a bitch. Fuck her.”

“Well – no, I think I want her back, actually.”

His brother sucked experimentally on the end of the joint. “Why?”

“I don’t know.” That wasn’t true, but he was feeling inexplicably sullen all of a sudden. He was starting to recall that one of the reasons he always liked smoking with Loki was that Loki’s new attitude was a lot harder to deal with otherwise.

Loki snorted. “Okay then.” He let the joint hang between his lips as he searched the desk for a lighter, eventually pulling one out of his pocket triumphantly. Lighting it, he inhaled deeply and blew a stream of smoke at the ceiling. “Here.”

Thor took a couple quick hits and turned the joint over in his fingers. “I guess – I don’t know, fuck. I think I love her.” He filled his lungs and then passed it back, scratching the stubble under his chin absentmindedly. “Maybe she’s right.”

Loki nodded as a thin trail of smoke trickled through his nostrils. “You _don’t_ really take anything seriously.”

“What, like you do?”

“No, but I’m not trying to get with Jane.”

“True.” He stared at a discolored spot on the carpet. “You know, she doesn’t like that I buy weed from you.”

He wasn’t sure why he told Loki that. It was true; Jane had expressed her concern that Loki was selling at all, and she’s been especially displeased when Fandral had let it slip that he was in fact the frat’s main supplier.

Loki tensed, but his expression betrayed no reaction. “You gonna find someone else?”

There was something in his voice when he said it; something Thor hadn’t heard in years, like the sound of a boy who existed only in his distant memory. It was the voice of a boy who’d cried when his brother went to kindergarten and he had to wait two more years; a boy whose macaroni art always went on the side of the fridge while his big brother’s went on the front. It startled Thor so much that he found himself looking hard at his brother, trying to see if that boy, the boy who made all his hair fall out when he covered his head in peroxide trying to look more like _him_ , if that ever-reverent little brother was still somewhere in there. 

But when Loki finally met his eyes, all he saw was the wall.

“No, of course not. You’ve got better shit than anyone on campus, and besides, dude, you’re my _brother_.”

Loki mumbled something imperceptibly that sounded almost like, “Am I?” but Thor thought he must’ve heard wrong.

“I’ll just tell her she has to deal with it.”

Loki flicked the roach into the trash and didn’t respond.

“How come you do this, anyways?”

His brother looked surprised. “What do you mean? Sell?”

“Yeah, I mean, what if you get caught?”

He laughed, and it was Thor’s turn to be surprised. “Caught by who? The fucking RAs? They buy from me too.” He grinned, and Thor thought it could almost be genuine. “It’s just weed, Thor. No one gives a shit.”

It wasn’t until long after Thor was back at the frat, comfortably buzzed and zoned out in front of a Roger Moore _Bond_ film that he considered an alternate meaning to Loki’s last words. He made a mental note to call Loki later and tell him that, yes, he did give a shit, and so did Jane, and so did their parents, although they might not know how to show it. The note ended up filed away with the all the other ways he’d come up with to shorten the distance between him and his brother, and he didn’t end up making that call, although, he told himself, he had every intention of doing it eventually.

\-- 

He bought a purple Gerber daisy at the gas station later that night and waited outside the lab for Jane. She emerged after he’d been waiting for nearly forty-five minutes, scratching lines into the bench and ignoring a half dozen phone calls from a very inebriated Tony. He picked up her equipment bag and slung it across his shoulder. “Hey.”

She took the flower and frowned. “What’s this?”

He took a deep breath. “I thought about what you said, and I think you’re right. I’m ready to take you – us, I mean, more seriously. If you’ll give me another chance.”

A small smile played over her lips, making his heart leap with hope. “So, you’re demonstrating this newfound seriousness by getting me a purple daisy?”

“It seemed like a good starting point.”

“You’ve definitely done worse.”

He took a tentative step forward. “Does this mean – ”

“I’ll let you back in – on a trial period,” she said, her voice edged with warning. “Don’t screw it up by getting all fratty on me again.”

“I won’t,” he promised.

She considered him shrewdly, and then nodded. “Okay. You can kiss me now.”

And just like that, life was good again for Thor.


End file.
